The New York Times takes an in-depth look at recent crises at Toyota, BP, and Goldman Sachs, and the role PR and communications played in them.

The paper spoke to several communications professionals, including Howard Rubenstein, and looked at each company and their missteps, and the challenges faced by the communications team.

The article focuses as first on the business of crisis communications, and is getting some buzz from people on Twitter.

The article said: "But for members of the protective tribe known as the crisis management industry, the scandals capturing headlines in the corporate realm involve far higher stakes, threatening the lifeblood of global behemoths worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The calamities have served up a lifetime supply of case studies to be mined for lessons on best practices, as well as pitfalls to avoid when disaster arrives.

"As conventional wisdom has it, the three companies at the center of these fiascos worsened their problems by failing to heed established protocol: When the story is bad, disclose it immediately—awful parts included—lest you be forced to backtrack and slide into the death spiral of lost credibility."